Oral airways were introduced into the practice of anesthesia and cardiopulmonary resuscitation several decades ago. The primary purpose of oral airways is to help provide a patient airway that allows positive pressure to be applied by a practitioner. Artificial airway devices providing a combination of an airway and an esophageal-obturator are well known in the art. Among the patents teaching such devices are Fortuna, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. U.S. 2004/0020491 A1; O'Neil, U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,176; Bertram, U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,733; Brain, U.S. Pat. No. 5,632,271; Frass, U.S. Pat. No. 5,499,625; Sato, U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,774; Frass, U.S. Pat. No. 4,688,568; and Young, U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,108. The content of each of these patents is incorporated by reference herein.
Each of these patents are generally directed to the concept of isolating the oral airway from a patient's esophagus while providing an esophageal-obturator for allowing communication with the esophagus through a lumen distinct from that providing communication with the larynx. However, each of these devices suffers from one or more shortcomings including: difficulty of placement within a patient; complexity in manufacture and expensive components rendering the devices unnecessarily expensive; lack of reliability in properly seating the devices within a patient; limited access to the patient's esophagus; and difficulty in using the airway for inserting an endotracheal tube. Accordingly, the present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of these problems.